How Did I Fall In Love With You
by Kurissyma san Tybalt
Summary: Ms Jones had been sitting in the stark white hospital waiting room for six hours, twenty-four minutes and forty-six seconds. Forty-eight. Fifty. Fify-two… BLUNT/JONES, not a deathfic


**How did I fall in love with you?**

July 21, 2008-- 0315 hours

Ms Jones had been sitting in the stark white hospital waiting room for six hours, twenty-four minutes and forty-six seconds.

Forty-eight. Fifty. Fify-two…

She was awaiting information on the condition of a certain teenage spy, one whose wellbeing obviously meant a great deal to her judging by her extreme diligence in waiting so very patiently for so very long a time. In fact, one nurse had spent the first three hours under the mistaken impression that he was, in fact, her own son, before she had voiced this and, to the great amusement of the other nurses on duty, been rather embarrassingly contradicted.

…Two. Four. Six. Eight.

-

July 21, 2008-- 0351 hours

By the conclusion of the seventh hour, Ms Jones had begun to lose hope, but had still not moved from her spot. A small sigh manoeuvred its way around the familiar peppermint lolly to escape her lips as she leaned back into her chair tiredly. The accident had happened late in the night and it had to be almost 4 in the morning by now…

-

_July 21, 2008—0352 hours_

She mused silently that with each minute that passed the next only seemed to grow further and further away…

-

_July 21, 2008—0356_

The peppermint lolly in Jones' mouth, nothing more than the tiniest sliver by now, snapped under the light pressure of her tongue and she sighed again before unwrapping another and popping it into her mouth. Her 23rd since arriving at the hospital.

-

_July 21, 2008—0417 hours_

At this hour, the sudden occupation of the seat beside her jolted the lightly sleeping Tulip Jones back to reality and she glanced around her in sudden horrified disorientation before letting her eyes finally fall to rest on her dear friend and superior sitting beside her.

Alan Blunt watched in silence as she recomposed herself before pulling her into his arms.

"The receptionist told me that you'd been here for hours…" he told her, his voice just a little off it's usual flat tone.

"Many," she agreed, resting her chin on his shoulder tiredly and refusing to elaborate.

Alan noticed this. "You should get some sleep," he told her.

"I'll wait until I have news of the boy first," she argued, frowning softly. "I may as well, as I've waited so long already."

Her superior didn't reply for a few moments, only locked her more firmly into his embrace. "If that is your will."

"Yes… Thank you, sir," she said, and as her eyelids began to flutter once more, she became immensely thankful for the softness of the pillow and the calm metronome of deep breathing that he had provided for her through the close proximity of his body.

-

July 21, 2008- 0459 hours

Ms Jones had never been one to sleep excessively or deeply, but never in all her years had she slept for so short a time as she did then. Then again, perhaps it was due to the nature of the dream she had had: one in which she had been sitting in a hospital waiting room being held by…

"Sir?"

Jones had just opened her eyes to find herself in none other than her superior's lap, being held and comforted by him.

"Yes, Ms Jones…" There was a sleepy lull to his voice, she found and she paused here and considered what she was about to say.

"Any word about Alex?" was eventually settled on.

"I promise to awaken you the moment there is," Alan replied, stroking her short black hair absently and for a moment she was made speechless by yet another display of uncharacteristic intimacy from him.

"I… Yes. Thank you again, sir."

And then sleep, which seemed to come so much more easily with him close by…

-

July 21, 2008- 0527 hours

"Ms Jones?"

The black-haired special agent was awake and at her most alert in the merest of instants. "Yes?" she asked of the nurse who had spoken to her. "Have you news for me?"

"Please forgive me forgive me for disturbing you and your husband—" Ms Jones almost protested but decided to let this comment slide for the relative ease of it "—But yes, I do. Your son is now awake and in a stable condition. I've been sent to tell you that you may see him if you wish. I would be happy to escort you…?"

Ms Jones stood without fuss and made a small show of awakening her 'husband'. "Dear," she said quite loudly. "Our son is awake." Her voice was quite purposefully filled with emotion and the note of dry humour hidden beneath it was discernable only to her superior, who made no mention of it, but whose lips twitched slightly at the corners—the only visible sign of his amusement he was in the habit of showing in any case.

"Then we will visit him, of course," he said, with a forged yawn as he wrapped his arm around Ms Jones' waist and nodded to the nurse. "If you will…?"

"Of course, sir," she replied immediately and then turned to lead the smartly dressed couple with their clackity-clack black shoes down the pristine white hallways of intensive care.

-

July 21, 2008- 0532 hours

Alex looked up as M16's Alan Blunt walked into the room, his deputy in hand. He smirked. "Hey, guys. Looking a little worse for wear, aren't we?" –This, in reference to the ruffled state of Ms Jones' closely-cropped back hair (as fiddled into untidiness during her nap by Alan Blunt) and yesterday's crumpled suits, thrown back on in the dark when they'd first gotten the call from the hospital.

"How're you doing, son?" Blunt returned monotonously—purposely avoiding the latter half of his comment, for the sake of keeping argument at bay for the time being (though whether out of compassion for him or the supervising nurse, it was unclear). "Your mother and I have been very worried about you."

There was no evidence to such a claim on his own face, but the sleeplessness was plain on that of his 'mother'.

"I'm fine," he replied, shifting slightly in bed, awkward at having caused her (if not him) the trouble.

Ms Jones took a seat on the edge of his bed herself and smiled affectionately as Alan moved to place a hand on her shoulder. "We have been worried," she confirmed quietly. "Both your father and myself."

"Ye-ah. Right."

Jones seemed hurt by this. "We have, Alex-!"

"It's not you I doubt," Alex returned immediately and she flushed for Blunt's sake.

"Alex, you must believe that we both would have been desolate if something serious had happened to you," she told him, her tone as close to scolding as she could allow it whilst he was still bedridden.

"Somehow, I just can't imagine Daddy feeling all that desolate at my loss."

_Snap…_

"I will _not_ have this conversation now! Not when I have been waiting out there almost 9 hours now to hear word of you!!"

"Sorry, mom…"

She gave him a look that said 'I should think so!'

"Did you get any sleep?"

"A little." It was Alan Blunt who replied. "She dreamed and fussed throughout most of the night, neither awake nor asleep. It was the best I could do to reassure her in her lucid moments—"

"I was _not_ that bad, Alan!"

Her gave her a small smile for that, and Alex was astonished. Had he just made… a joke? She was certainly laughing as though he had. And what was _that_? A _smile_??

Suddenly the pressure seemed almost too much for Ms Jones, as she fished around the wrappers in her handbag for another peppermint lolly—her 28th-to-be. "How are you feeling, Alex?" she asked compassionately and he might have shrugged if his left shoulder hadn't taken a bullet the night before.

Instead he was forced to reply in words, "…Yeah, fine," but it was always so much more difficult to hide a lie in words, he found.

"Are you in any pain?"

"Hardly."

She doubted that.

-

July 21, 2008- 0556 hours

The well-dressed couple didn't stay long once their son had awoken, the night-nurse mused sadly as she watched them leave, but then, maybe that was best considering the boy's state. Looking back in the door, she frowned slightly as she saw the boy chuckling to himself. He could have been more grateful, she thought. His parents had obviously been worried sick! …But teenagers were always like that, weren't they? Especially the boys.

Sighing as she tucked a stray strand of matted red hair behind her ear tiredly, she walked into the room and set about tidying this-and-that, checking the readings of a few choice monitors. Having seen how coldly the boy had just treated his own father, however, the nurse was admittedly rather surprised when he spoke up to thank her and, in the midst of fluffing up his pillow, she found herself pausing quite involuntarily.

"Your welcome, son," she told him plainly, then she drew back and looked him in the face. "How're you feeling?"

The boy smiled then. "Bit crooked," he admitted. "Even winding up my dad didn't do the same good it usually does."

"Maybe 'cause you know how much he's really worried about you?" she suggested and the boy just laughed quietly.

"Maybe," he agreed, however, and she smiled at him again as she turned to leave the room.

-

Meanwhile, as Blunt glanced across the gearshift at the sleeping agent in his passenger seat, he too smiled—one of the first really honest smiles he'd smiled in a long time— and leaned over to give her a light kiss behind her ear. Messed up family that they were, each of them was going to be okay, and he was quite uncharacteristically happy about that.


End file.
